Thursday, May 12, 2005

If Not Golden Eagles or Warriors Then What Are We?

Now that the decision on the new athletic nickname for Marquette University is now within the hands of the student body and its alumni base, at least that is the claim from Father Wild and the Board of Trustees, I thought it would be intriguing to experiment with some of choices that have been thought up so far. The Marquette University College Republicans have a poll with the following choices …

Hilltoppers

Golden Avalanche

Golden Eagles

Blue & Gold

Explorers

Jumpin' Jesuits

Fightin' Jesuits

Trailblazers

Golden Knights/Golden Crusaders

As this point in time I am simply going to wait for the official list of ten choices come out before I make a final decision, but I thought I would comment slightly on a few of the options presented in the following poll. Hilltoppers no longer makes any sense since we are not located on a hill as we were when the university was first established, hence the reason why the nickname was changed to the Warriors in the 1970s. A few of my fellow Marquette peers have backed the Golden Avalanche choice but this too, at least from my perspective, does not make sense. Sure, it is part of Marquette’s tradition but only from the perspective of the now defunct football team. The name for the campus’ football team was changed to Avalanche while the other athletic sports teams stuck with the Hilltopper nickname. It does not make sense to choose this on the basis that it represents a hollowed tradition of this university when it represented a branch of the athletics department that no longer exists. I won’t even bother wasting the time commenting on the Golden Eagles nickname … this was the reason the board went with the ‘Gold’ decision in the first place and now they want it on here? They never run out of bright ideas, do they? Speaking of which, who was the genius who thought after the past week’s ‘Gold’ debacle that simply tacking on ‘Blue’ to ‘Gold’ nickname would make the choice any less asinine? I can imagine the exchange … “Since Gold didn’t work, how about Blue & Gold?” “But that’s two color names instead of one, it is essentially the same” “No it isn’t. There’s two of them” “But they’re still just colors” “But there’s two! Two is always better then one, right?” “Brilliant!” ‘Explorers’ is a neat idea, inventive I will admit, but not something I would definitely be excited about. Some have suggested either Jumpin’ Jesuits or Fightin’ Jesuits (personally I would believe the Board of Trustees would side with the first one more then the second, unless they happen to be especially egomaniacal and given Father Wild’s arrogant stance with ‘Gold’ over the past week …), and while those are certainly creative, I wouldn’t bite. The Jesuits are the most liberal Catholic organization in the United States and it is not a name, at least from my perspective, that I would be all that excited about cheering for.

Since I am being so critical of the choices, what would be my choice? Though I have found particular interest in a certain nickname option, I know right off the bat that the Board of Trustees would reject it, so I am not really all that optimistic that it will be on the list of ten later this month. If it were up to me, I would go with either the Golden Crusaders or the Golden Knights. Why won’t this be on the list later this month? One, the Arab minority on campus would be upset (God forbid since the current university administration has been eating out of their hand all year), and secondly, there has been in the public eye a grave misinterpretation of the Crusades and too many I think would likely misinterpret the nickname from our standpoint. Right now I think the administration is doings its best to avoid any further controversy but honestly I can not imagine the reputation of the university being in more jeopardy then it is now.